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* Jobcentre staff handling last year's surge in unemployment were under-trained, overstretched and worked with 'contradictory' instructions from government, according to the Financial Times.

Source of frustration

Do the benefits of outsourcing public services claimed by the industry stack up? Probably not, is the answer, but that won't stop its growth. A report - More for Less - published by the Confederation of British Industry, whose public services strategy board represents the multibillon-pound outsourcing industry, makes it clear that the private sector has its beady eye on huge swathes of hitherto in-house services, from cleaning and catering to back-office functions, such as HR and finance administration. The CBI argues that contracting out these services alone could slash £30bn off Britain's £175bn budget deficit.

"We believe across the NHS alone there is significant potential to make efficiency savings by opening up 65% of cleaning and catering services in hospitals to competition," the report says. It cites another industry body, the Cleaning & Support Services Association, which estimates that this could save £6bn by 2015-16.

Competition, claims the CBI, has been:

Used successfully to cut maximum waiting times for hospital treatment, improve results in schools, reduced re-offendng, build and maintain modern public buildings, make streets cleaner and safer, and much more. It has challenged poor performance and incentivised providers to take more account of what the public needs.

The report says it draws on the experience of CBI members working with government. What it fails to mention, however, are claims by Unison that in 2000, 22 out of 23 hospitals that failed to meet NHS standards were cleaned by private contractors, even though no more than half of Britain's hospitals had outsourced cleaning at this time.

There is surely a lesson there about the inferior pay and conditions imposed on staff by outsourcing companies to keep down costs.

It is one that public services would do well to heed in the coming stampede.